I’ve discovered a lovely, sneaky trick to play on fellow gym-goers whenever I force myself to go to gym these days.
Of course, no normal person wants to be in a gym surrounded by sweaty, heaving masses, but nobody wants to take the risk of being mugged while walking or jogging, so we go to gym and invent ways to escape the tedium of 60 mind-numbing minutes in an environment that I’m starting to realise can be more entertaining than I initially anticipated.
My trick is simple. I get on to a treadmill, put my iPod on and set the treadmill for a 20-minute workout. Not being in very good shape and not having the grace of those gazelle-like women who lope effortlessly along as if they were born to run, I manage to look as elegant as a lost hippo desperately trying to find a mudhole to hide in, so naturally I would gravitate to the treadmill furthest away from anyone else. Now, however, I prefer company, especially the company of those who don’t have rock-hard abs and are more likely to struggle through their workouts (like me) and who, most importantly, are working out in pairs with equally unfit people.
After a minute of listening to my iPod, I pretend to adjust the volume when in fact (and here’s the sneaky bit), I’m busy switching it off, and that’s when the fun starts.
The first time I do this, I have a very plump middle-aged black woman battling on the treadmill on my right. I start off with a brisk walk and then move on to jogging and I notice that I have caught her attention as she turned to look at me several times. I pretended to ignore her. She turns to her friend and says: ”I think we should try jogging now.” ”Why?” asks her friend who is struggling with the brisk walk. ”Look at this sdudla [fat person] next to me … she’s jogging man!” she says as she motions in my direction.
That’s a bit rich, I think, especially as it was coming from a sdudla mafehla-fehla (really fat person).
My takkies squeak as I momentarily lose my footing. I don’t know much isiZulu, but I know a few words and I know she is talking about me. I don’t want her to know that I can hear or understand what she is saying so I continue jogging even though I am reaching my limit and wheezing awkwardly.
”How do you make this thing go faster?” the lady next to me asks her friend after a few minutes.
”Hey wena, I’m not jogging. That sdudla is obviously showing off … look at how she’s breathing,” says the friend.
They both look at me and start laughing, and as the laughter subsides, the friend, in an obvious attempt to distract her gym partner from the idea of jogging, says that a guy pumping iron in front of us is quite cute.
”Ja, that’s if you find gorillas attractive,” says the lady next to me as they start laughing again. I look up and the unfortunate guy in question looks hairier than my Labrador. I immediately smile and then grimace to try to hide my mirth, and my contorted expression probably makes me look like I am having a seizure.
The ladies notice and start laughing at me again as I breathe in great lung-bucketfulls of air as if I’m on the verge of asphyxiation.
I stop and move on to the exercycles in front of which are more men pumping iron. One, in particular, is quite muscular and is obviously very taken with his bulging form. He does a few chin-ups and immediately goes to the nearest mirror to check if his muscles have grown. He looks disappointed. He goes back and does 10 more reps and again rushes off to the mirror, straining to see if he’s achieved any growth and he looks slightly pleased. To the untrained eye such as mine, it looks like all he’s done is make his veins pop out a little more, but this is obviously an achievement.
I move to the cardio area and there’s a woman dressed in a skimpy top, mini-skirt and stilletoes who’s watching the man in front of her working out. I don’t understand this. Why on earth would anyone be so pathetically desperate as to watch his/her significant other working out? He’s not playing a game of squash or doing anything extraodinary, but there sits his doe-eyed girlfriend fluttering her eyelashes at him. Maybe she’s tranquilised or maybe she’s an incentive. Maybe, if he makes his veins pop out far enough, she’ll go home with him. The vacuous twerp staring at her dude has annoyed me enough to get back on to the treadmill next to the entertaining duo who are still giggling like schoolgirls.
I adjust my headphones pretending to still be listening to my iPod. ”Heh heh, the sdudla‘s back. Hope she doesn’t try to kill herself again,” says the lady next to me as I start jogging.